Stepping Down?

Wired Magazine has a report that Shigeru Miyamoto (affectionately ‘Shiggy’) is stepping down from his high position with Nintendo to a smaller role where he can work on smaller, faster projects with a younger team. Nintendo has since denied this.

Nintendo wouldn’t have had to deny anything, except that some writers looking for pageviews wrote headlines like “Creator of Mario, Zelda Says “I’m retiring”, Will Make Smaller Games”, or “Nintendo legend Miyamoto retires from current position”, or “Shigeru Miyamoto ‘retiring from current position’ at Nintendo, working on smaller games”.

Look at how most of those headlines say that he’s retiring, THEN mention he’s making smaller games (one doesn’t even mention that). I think a valid headline would be along the lines of  “Miyamoto wants to work on smaller games”. Jim Sterling even wrote “It turns out that Shigeru Miyamoto’s “retirement” yesterday was the result of a misunderstanding at Wired” in Destructoid’s followup piece discussing Nintendo’s denial. But if you go read the original article, Miyamoto directly said “I’m not saying that I’m going to retire from game development … what i really want to do is be in the forefront of game development”. Hey Jim, that’s not a misunderstanding at Wired, that’s a misunderstanding at Destructoid (& Kotaku, & Joystiq …). At least you picked a sweet photo of Shiggy.

When I read Chris Kohler’s initial article I was really excited. Take Miyamoto’s quote about wanting to be in the forefront of game design and him wanting to make smaller games. Doesn’t that sound awesome? I want to see these games. A master like Miyamoto working with a handpicked, passionate, young and fresh team? Where do I preorder?

Don’t let these crappy digital rags worry you about Miyamoto. He’s not retiring. He wants to get his hands dirty again. And I’m excited.

EDIT (10:10 AM): 10 minutes after I wrote this piece, Kotaku posted this:

 Really? “The internet was rocked?” The grist of Wired’s report is that he wants to actually work on games again, not that he’s on the verge of retiring. Try reading?